


Falling Apart

by ManaMachina



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Cortega, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-18
Updated: 2012-10-18
Packaged: 2017-11-16 13:23:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/539893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ManaMachina/pseuds/ManaMachina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vega's been flirting and teasing Cortez for as long as he's known him.  But it's Commander Shepard that can bring that twinkle to the pilot's eyes again.  Just as he's figuring out why it bothers him so much, James realizes he may have lost what he never knew he always wanted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Falling Apart

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in response to a beautiful art HoboVampire posted on Tumblr. I own none of these characters.
> 
> Also inspired by two songs from the "Love Will Ruin" album by Neverending White Lights; Falling Apart and The Hereafter.

James Vega licked his lips and brought himself slowly closer. Inch by inch, his body trembling with the effort of going so slowly, almost tenderly as he lowered himself down. Barely an inch away, he quickly pushed himself back up from the metal grating that made up the floor of the shuttle bay. One hand was behind his back as he did his final reps of push-ups for the morning. As he held himself up, he looked across the room at Cortez.

Steve was giving that long stare at nothing again. Vega shook his head and started down again. He hated that look on his old friend’s face. That look that said he was thinking about his husband again. The pain that practically radiated off of the pilot worried James. Hell, Cortez mourned more for one man than James did his whole squad.

He grunted and jumped to his feet with an ease that defied his massive bulk. He flexed in his tight Alliance issue t-shirt, popping his neck stretching his shoulders. He wasn’t even nearing a sweat yet. For all his discipline, his head wasn’t in it. He picked up his own, personal favourite shotgun and walked over to the mod bench. He wanted to strip it, clean it, and tweak it a bit after that last battle. He brought over with him his secret weapon; he always used a little linseed oil when he cleaned the weapon. Not a lot; just a tiny bit.  A little flavour of earth to help him defeat her enemies.

As he got to work, he heard Steve’s hands expertly checking the weapons of the armory again. Good; if he was working, he wasn’t thinking too much of the past. As Cortez walked over to the lockers just beyond the bench to pick up something or another, James flexed the muscles of his shoulders and back. It was pure reflex by now. He shot a quick glance out of the corner of his eye, just long enough to see Cortez’ quick retreat and ducking blush. Heh. He loved showing off for Esteban.

He raised his head when he heard the elevator opening up. Commander Shepard walked over to where Steve was standing at his computer. They greeted each other, held a quiet conversation James couldn’t make out. Except that Cortez gave a laugh. James ducked his head a little. Figured. Loco was his hero, and he didn’t hide that he felt it, but it made him weirdly jealous that the Commander could distract Cortez as easily as breathing. Could get him to make that deep laugh that James liked so much.  Loco was barely trying.

James heard two sets of footsteps behind him heading to the elevator. He heard Steve say “I have a hard time saying no to you, Commander.”

Vega couldn’t fathom why, but he suddenly felt like he’d been kicked in the balls. He turned and called out “Hey, later, Esteban!” but both men were in the elevator, laughing again.

Vega looked around helplessly. He felt like his head was floating off his body. Did he just watch Steve get picked up by Loco? Was that what the fuck he just saw? What he heard? It wasn’t that Vega had a problem with it; fuck no, it wasn’t that. It was just…

James stood looking at the elevator dumbly for about ten minutes before he finally went over to Steve’s station. He had no idea where his mind was, but playing with a mass amount of guns would keep him focused on something otherthan his sudden desire to fly the damn shuttle back to Earth.

***

It was twelve hours later. James was sitting at a table on the lower level of Purgatory. He wasn’t watching the dancers on the elevator platforms, though he was pretending too. He had a bottle of tequila and a tumbler. He had started the night just drinking cerveza, but he needed something stronger than beer when he saw Cortez enter thirty minutes ago and go up to the second floor bar. _One more shot_ he kept telling himself. _Just one more shot, and I’m going to straighten this shit out once and for fucking all._

He would have made good on it, too—eventually—had he not watched Loco enter the nightclub and make a beeline for the stairs. Vega waited about ten minutes before he picked up his tumbler and walked over to the foot of the stairs. He looked up, expecting to see the two men standing at the bar, chatting. He was all prepared to go and break in. Ask where the hell they’d been, if everything was all right. Instead, he caught an eyeful of the men dancing (well, if you could call what Loco did “dancing”), together. Together.

Vega winced. That feeling like he had been punched in the cojones came back full force. He walked back over to his table, grabbed the whole bottle of hard liqueur and up ended it in his mouth. After swallowing half of it in a rapid succession of swallows, Vega put the bottle down and walked outof the club to hail a cab. “Fuck this!” he yelled to the astonishment of various patrons standing outside.

***

Cortez made his way back to the ship shortly after he and Shepard had finished their dance. The Commander had asked him all sorts of questions as they moved. Things about how Robert and he had known it was real. Steve thought that the probing questions probably related to Liara. Actually, it was talking about the Asari that had really helped Steve along. John had told him about how, after Ashley had died, he felt it was betraying her. He’d just shot down Ash’s romantic advances in favour of Liara the night before Virmire. The amount of guilt the Commander still felt was astounding.

“How do you,” Steve trailed off, unsure of how he wanted to finish that sentence.

Of course, the Commander was so damn sharp, he picked up on the thread of disjointed thought precisely. “How do I allow myself to move on despite the guilt?” Steven nodded. John shrugged. “Liara, the love we have for each other, is worth it.”

Steve thought about it all the way back on the ship and into his bunk. It was nice that he had someone to confide in. Well, someone that wasn’t the subject of almost his every waking thought. Every time that Cortez had a second, he was staring and thinking about, of all damn people, James Vega. His “friend” who always flirted and didn’t even realize how much it hurt to have that body, that mind, that soul, flaunted in front of a man who wanted it all desperately. It was becoming damn near an obsession.

He’d taken to distracting himself by looking at pictures of Robert, listening to the recording. Then he was hit with the guilt again. He was sitting here, hot and bothered and lusting after a younger man, and his husband was dead. When John had convinced him to take a break, they’d talked a lot about survivor’s guilt. John didn’t know who it was Steve confessed he had feelings for. However, the Commander had made it clear, having those feelings wasn’t a betrayal to anyone; not himself, not Robert.

Wallowing in misery despite Robert’s express desires _was_ , however.

Steven Cortez fell asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow for the first time since everything had gone to hell. He didn’t even notice Mount Vega wasn’t in it’s usual place in the opposite bunk.

***

Cortez stifled a yawn behind his hand as he stepped off the elevator. He was later then usual, because one of the showers was being used for the longest time by someone. He was refreshed, pressed and, while slightly hungover, ready to start the day. He pulled up his inventory program and looked around for all the work he’d left for himself the day before.

“Huh,” he said. All of the weapons were prepped and ready. His fingers flew over the holo interface, but the order wasn’t making any sense. What the hell?

He heard the elevator open. James stumbled out. His hair was still wet from a shower and the scent of his spicy soap filled the room. “EDI!” he barked. “Turn down the damn lights!”

“Right away, James,” came the pleasant reply. Followed by, “And I would just like to remind you that once we are away from the Citadel, I request you limit your showers to less then ten minutes. An hour is a bit…excessive.”

“EDI, I love you, but please shut the fuck up and go away,” James muttered.

“Privacy mode engaged,” came the almost hurt reply.

Cortez saw the elevator door was in lock-out mode. Great. Now he was alone in the shuttle bay with a man that looked like a very angry bear.

“What the hell crawled up your ass this morning?” Steve asked.

Vega jumped and looked at Cortez from head to toe as if seeing him for the very first time. The younger man’s eyes were bloodshot. His brow crinkled together. He leaned his hip against the mod bench. “Heh. Decided to come to work today, Esteban? Figured the Commander would still have you out.”

Cortez rolled his eyes and turned back to his station. He tried to ignore the way Vega’s too-tight t-shirt was hugging every muscle like a lover’s hand. “Hey, did anyone mess around with my settings yesterday?”

Vega was suddenly wrapping an arm around his shoulder. He could move like a damned cat when he wanted to, and this was obviously one of those times. “I just changed the sorting,” the larger man said, pressing the commands to reverse it.

Steve blushed hard, much harder than he thought possible for how much blood seemed to be going straight to his groin. It was one thing to watch all that bulk as Vega showed off in his exercises. It was another to have it pressing against his back. He couldn’t help the shudder that ran through his body.

“Heh. Feel something you like, Esteban?” James said out of the blue. Something in his painful, very hungover head told him that that went over the line of teasing to actually, flat-out flirting. The other part of his brain told him so fucking what? He felt it, he might as well say it. He could feel the way Steve’s body reacted to him. It was headier than the tequila the night before.

Despite that it was the third time it’d happened in twenty-four hours, James wasn’t prepared for the gut-punching feeling that swept over him as Steve deliberately pulled away from him and said, “Whatever, man,” dismissively.

James knew it now. He knew it for certain. Steven and the Commander…he’d just waited too long to go up the damn stairs. He was such a fucking coward that he’d lost his one shot for the one thing that he didn’t even realize he’d wanted until it was being scooped up by a man he couldn’t even begin to compete with. James back up across the room, ass hitting hard on the mod bench. He made his voice sound as tough as he could as he said, “Where’s Loco this morning?”

Steve couldn’t handle it. When Vega’s voice had filled his ear with that last bit of teasing, he almost felt his knees go out. He was so hard he was throbbing. What was the younger man trying to prove? That was just…that crossed a line. He didn’t need the pain of that shit. He brushed it off as more teasing. As flirting turned into a cruel joke, and probably from whatever had pissed him off over night.

Yet, when James asked where the Commander was, it was like some thread snapped in the back of his mind. Why did James sound like a kid who just watched a bully break his favourite toy? Steve turned his head, one eyebrow quizzically shooting up at the look on James’ face. Or the ‘unlook’ as it were. Like a mask had fallen over features that usually only showed good-nature and humour.

Only severe emotional pain could make a solider put on that particular mask. He was still looking at James when he answered, “In his quarters or Liara’s, probably. I figured they were heading to one of the two after they left Purgatory together last night.”

Because he was still watching him, Cortez caught the mask breaking into pieces and a demented hope flashing over the large man’s features before it was reigned in by a cloud of hateful doubt. “Say what? I mean, you and he were…” James trailed off, suddenly aware Cortez was watching him intently. James turned around, quickly, hunching over his massive shoulders.

Not fast enough for Steve to miss the blush that crashed over his features. _Why the hell is he blushing? Why the hell did he think I went to bed with the Commander?_ He was thinking as he turned back to his terminal. _Wait,_ he thought looking up at the shuttle. _Why the hell does he care so much?_

Cortez turned slowly to face Vega’s back. The younger man’s body looked like it as quivering all over. Steve walked slowly over and put a hand on James’ bicep. James didn’t turn around, but his head tilted as if looking at hand. A drop of water fell on Steve’s fingers. He took his hand back and licked it off. Bitter, salt, tears.

“Hey, man,” He said, pulling on James’ arm.

James moved quick and wrapped his arms around the pilot. His deep baritone voice was harsh, barely a whisper as the words came out of him, as if being wrenched out. “When you didn’t even say good-bye…thought you were…and when you were dancing with him…Thought I waited to long to tell you…never teasing…meant every word…”

Steve couldn’t really piece together what the younger man was getting at, until he realized that he was being held by Mr. Vega, and that Mr. Vega, despite his apparent despair, was becoming aroused. This wasn’t happening. He was either in his bunk having a wet dream, or Shepard had slipped him ryncol. He wrapped his arms around James’ back. The younger man cried out viscerally, arms shaking, body reacting with even more heat against Steve’s thigh.

“What the fuck did _you_ drink last night?” Steve asked him.

James didn’t answer. They held each other awkwardly for a few minutes as James’ body stopped quivering. His voice was still hoarse as he whispered against Steve’s neck. “You’ve never looked at me like you look at the Commander, Esteban.”

Steve was about to answer when lips slid over his and sealed his smart-ass remark in his throat. It had been so long, but his body immediately reacted. He opened his lips to Vega’s eager tongue. As it shot into his mouth, he sucked on it once, before jousting with his own against the welcomed invader. He felt James’ soft whimper harden him in a way that defied anything he’d felt in a very long time, and snap something in his mind.

Steve pulled away from the kiss and grabbed James’ wrist. He pushed the younger man’s hand against the strained fabric over his crotch. Taking Vega’s earlobe is his teeth and growled out “This is what you do to me. And you alone.”

Vega’s legs, strong as they were, nearly fell out from under him. He fell carefully to his knees. His fingers immediately moved to fondle Steve through his uniform. “Dios,” he groaned. “Dios, Esteban. Por favor,” his baritone voice was still harsh, guttural. The need was palpable.

Cortez heard himself asking, “Tell me. Tell me what you want, Vega,” His voice hot with passion, deep with need, commanding and demanding.

Vega shuddered, eyes closing. He felt the strangest calm fall over the fighter within him. It was like being in a fire tent, surrounded by an inferno. He moved his fingers off Steve’s hard length and pressed a kiss to the fabric, tracing the shape of his hard cock with his lips, making the pilot’s body quiver.

“I’m waiting, Vega.”

He felt the commanding tone release something in his mind. Some final restraint on his own self-control; or his own self-doubt. “You, Esteban. I want you. I’ve always wanted you.”

Steve grabbed Vega’s short hair and tilted the man’s head up. James had never seen Cortez like this. His blue eyes were almost black with ardor. Steve went to his own knees, bringing their lips crushing together. Vega’s arms went around him, whimpering, tongue begging for admittance again. Wanting to taste Steve’s tongue. Yet, Steve demanded entry of his own this time.

Cortez’ fingers ripped the fabric of Vega’s stretched-thin shirt off his back as easily has he would have torn paper. Just because he wasn’t as bulked as the marine didn’t mean he was without his own strengths. James shuddered. Steve broke their lips apart, laying nibbling kisses, across his chin, down his muscular neck, and lower.

“Dios! Esteban!” He cried out as Steve’s tongue lapped across one of his nipples. He wrapped his hands around the pilot’s shoulders, holding him closer, feeling he’d never get him close enough.

Steve’s tongue dragged across James’ chest. He tasted the spice of his shower gel, the salt of his sweat. He could smell the arousal, as well as feel it in the way the younger man was grinding against his thighs. Steve brought his fingers up to play with James’ other nipple as his tongue resumed tracing the massive chest so many hours were put into building with an appreciative appetite born of months of longing.

“Please, I’m not going to last long. Please Esteban!”

“Tell me what you want,” Steve demanded again, fingers twisting one nipple as his teeth grazed the other.

James could barely breathe, let alone talk. Somehow, he managed out of a throat that felt like it was closing. “Fuck me. Please, I’m begging you. Esteban, please, please fuck me.”

Cortez shuddered in response. His long skilled fingers unbuttoned Vega’s pants. “Take these off,” he said through clenched teeth.

Vega fumbled in his haste to pull off his boots, dragged down his fatigues and skivvies underneath. Before he even thought to hesitate, he stood completely naked in front of Steven Cortez; his Esteban.

Steve was fingering a small bottle that he recognized without difficulty as the linseed oil James’ liked to use on his favourite weapon.The irony was delicious. Cortez had taken off his top and boots while the younger man stripped. He walked around him, hands playing with the small bottle of oil behind his back. His face was fixed in a hungry look of approval. “God , you’re gorgeous.”

Vega’s painful swollen cock twitched at the compliment. Steve stood in front of him, placing the bottle of oil on the floor carefully. He slowly undid the button of his uniform pants. He pulled the zipper down just as slowly. He pushed his pants and boxers down and stepped out of them. He was larger than James’ expected, thicker. He didn’t even realize he was starting to shake.

Steve smirked and motioned for him to get down. Vega fell straight to his knees. “No,” Steve said, as James started to get on all fours facing away from him. “No, I want you on your back. You’re going to watch everything I do to you.”

James came as close to coming as words alone could surely ever bring him. He laid down on his back, putting a massive arm behind his head so he could crane his neck and watch as Steve opened the bottle of flax-seed oil. He coated his fingers and rubbed them together, arming them. Cortez looked up at him sharply. “Vega. Have you ever done this before?”

James blushed deep, dark scarlet. He just shook his head. The unspoken ‘Not with another man’ seemed to need not saying.

Cortez’ severe expression broke apart in a look of tenderness that melted everything James was or had ever been. His breath hitched as he felt the first, well lubricated finger touch him. “Shh,” Steve whisper, leaning over. “Relax,” before he slid his lips around the head of James’ cock.

“Dios!” James moaned.

He barely noticed as Steve’s finger slid inside him. Steve’s tongue began lashing around him. James’ didn’t seem to notice the finger in his ass, but Steve waited until he felt the muscles of his sphincter relax just enough to slide a second finger in, even as he took James into his throat. The younger man felt it this time, and he writhed, trying to get away or trying to get deeper, Cortez didn’t think even he knew himself.

It was answered with James’ hurried whisper, “More…please, more!”

Steve came up for air and smiled at him. “Shh. Slowly. I want you to enjoy this. All of this,” he looked down at the soldier’s cock again before greedily licking lips and taking the length into his throat again, slipping a third finger in. James’ hips bucked, he was making growling, whimpering, pleading noises. Steve wrapped his other hand around himself and lubricated his cock well with the warming oil. He couldn’t ever remember being this hard before. Not ever. He felt no guilt at this.

He began to move his fingers in time with his bobbing head. James’ head twisted from side to side, hips undulating as well as he could. Spanish phrases tripped over his tongue as he begged, pleaded to be taken. To be taken now. To be taken by “his” Esteban.

Steve wanted to take it slow but he was slowly losing his mind at his own set pace. He slid his fingers completely out of James’ ass, the young man whimpering loudly.

Steve guided himself so the head of his thick cock was just touch James’ lubricated, well-prepared hole. He slide himself in, just the head of his cock, while James bucked against the intrusion that was too much and too little all at once. It burned but it was beautiful at the same time. He tried to move Steve faster, but the older man, wisely, wasn’t rushing. When he felt James’ body relax again, he pushed in deeper. Slowly, an inch at a time, until he was fully seated in Vega’s ass.

Barely able to talk himself, looking down at the writhing creature of lust and longing beneath him, Cortez whisper “Is this what you want?”

“More!” Came the guttural reply, James’ hands reached for Steve’s hips to try and move him.

Steve pulled almost all the way out, to Vega’s whimpering despair. Then he pushed back fully into him. James’ body flexed up, groaning in pleasure at the sweet invasion, the destruction of everything he’d ever thought of as being himself and the creation of everything he’d ever truly wanted. He gave into the pleasure of it, barely aware of anything beyond this feeling of being truly, completely taken.

“Look at me!” Cortez demanded. James somehow opened his dazed and hooded eyes, finding the passion-filled blue staring down at his face. He was rewarded for his obedience as Steve picked up his pace, and began fucking him hard and fast, control slipping, need taking over. He leaned over, bracing himself one the metal floor. “Come for me, Vega. Make yourself come for me,” he ordered.

James took his cock in his hand and began pumping, Steve’s saliva still soaking him from root to tip. “I’m…I’m not going to last Esteban!”

“That’s right,” Steve told him. “That’s right, make yourself come for me. Look into my eyes, you fucking tease, and come for me. Come!”

James couldn’t move his eyes. He just kept staring, unabashed, and jerked himself off for a few more seconds until he came all over his chest and Steve’s, cords of his neck straining out as he howled in passionate triumph.

“Yes,” Steve hissed. “Yes!” and he thrust hard into Vega one last time, losing himself in the stars bursting behind his eyes with his orgasm, cock twitching as wave after wave crashed over him.

He fell against James’ massive chest. He heard the young man’s wild heartbeat, felt it against his ear.  But he heard something else. He looked up inquisitively. James was shaking. He had a terrified look in his eyes as he looked down at Steve.

Steve pulled himself out of James, ignoring the whimper. He leaned up on his elbows and softly, gently kissed him, one hand gently touching his cheek. As he pulled away, he saw James was crying again.

He whispered, “Jaime,” the Spanish version of Vega’s name. It made the younger man look at him in the eye again with rising hope. “Te amo.”

Vega’s fears washed away as he wrapped his arms around the pilot. “I love you, too, Steven.”


End file.
